Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award: Fundamental Processes of Social Change

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Under the direction of Dr. William A. Parkinson at the Field Museum of Natural History, William P. Ridge, a Ph.D. Candidate at the University of Illinois at Chicago will conduct archaeological fieldwork to examine the social responses and adaptations in small-scale societies to large-scale population shifts and economic changes. The modern world is characterized by dense urban landscapes and massive degrees of political and economic inequality, but these are recent developments within the human experience. Since the end of the Pleistocene, most humans have lived in small, autonomous, village societies. Through archaeological research, archaeologists can examine extended periods of time – centuries or millennia – and trace the emergent forms of characteristics that have come to define the contemporary world, such as social differentiation, economic inequality, the negotiation of cultural identities, and the physiological effects of dense populations. Why do people come together to live in ever larger populations? How are social relationships and cultural identities reshaped by shifting populations? How and under what circumstances do such aggregations fail? With global and domestic population movements more frequent than ever before, such questions are increasingly pertinent.The doctoral student and colleagues will examine how social structure and population changed in prehistoric village societies. The research will consist primarily of targeted excavations at prehistoric settlement sites. Excavations will take place at prehistoric villages that belong to a period when there was a juxtaposition between, on the one hand, the disappearance of large settlements, and, on the other hand, the establishment of rich burial grounds. Combining excavation data from households with the high-precision chronological data of radiocarbon dates the project will elucidate how demographic and economic processes occurring at the regional level effected the nature of local society and at what pace these changes took place. The research team will generate models to explain human responses to population and economic fluctuations. The project will focus on training and data generation and will provide educational and research opportunities for both students and scholars.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.